How To Avoid Making Blunders | ChessKid

Hello again chess kids! Are you scared because your queen is under attack? No, don't be, because I'm going to show you how black can survive this position. But before we get to it, go ahead and hit that subscribe button, because we want to thrive, not just survive. And you can do that if you watch all my videos. Okay, back to the action. Now I do want to tell you that this is an actual position that one of my actual students played. My student was white, but this is important. This was played in an over-the-board tournament, aka real life. It was played at a national championship recently in the USA. Okay, now first of all, this four can be gotten out of, that's a technical term, very easily by just taking, and that's exactly what black did. So my student took back, obviously, and then black thought that he was just winning. Black played rook check, and then when the king moved, the person playing black said, hey, the king's here, the rook's here, nothing's guarding the rook, there's a four, and the person playing black picked up the queen and started to put her here, and uh-oh, uh-oh, wait a minute, you guys are probably throwing tomatoes at your screen. You realize that there's a white queen sitting over there on a four that's going to capture you. Now, to the credit of the player playing black, he also realized at the last minute that his queen was going to get captured, and he did not drop his queen on that square. Now, we do have to explain a little difference between over-the-board chess and online chess. In online chess, we don't have anything called touch move, but in over-the-board chess, once touch apiece, you have to move it. The person playing black did not drop the queen here, which meant that he had the ability to move the queen somewhere else, so he very quickly said, oh, I'll just go in, take this pawn, but that is not what you're supposed to do. Don't just pick any old secondary plan. He was right not to let go of the queen on the bad square f4, but was wrong to just continue on. Maybe you can see how white wins the game. White actually won the game. My student got a little fortunate by now playing rook check. The king had to move queen check, and then, well, I guess you could put your queen in the way, but otherwise, when you block, it is made into queen check. The only legal move is to play queen f7 and then takes his checkmate. I want to walk you back, though, because when you play in an over-the-board tournament and you use the touch move rule, we could have learned a lot from this position. Let's pretend you did touch the queen, and you realize she does not want to be on that square. What are you supposed to do? Well, what I was told when I was a kid, and pretty much every coach teaches their kid, is to put the queen back on the starting square. Move the queen all the way back, assuming you did not let go of her. If you let go of her on f4, then it's done. You can't change your mind, but if you put the queen back on f7, you can then take your hands away from the board, not have your hands block your view, not feel compelled to make a very quick decision, and find the best move. Now, your opponent might be like, hey, hey, fun master Mike, you touched your queen, in which case, I would very politely say, I know. I'm just figuring out where to move her. The funny thing about this position, the reason I wanted to show you this position, is because there is only one queen move that does not lose, and that takes time to find, and you can't do that sort of detective work with your arm over the board and your hand on the queen. What is that move? Well, let's look at some bad moves. If the queen moves here, or here, we'll go ahead and put one on the board, then white plays rook to e8 and wins the queen by pinning it. Okay, now maybe you thought that queen here works, because then after check, king here, queen check, same idea as before, then queen here blocks, ah, but there's rook to h8, tricking the king to move it away, and after king takes rook, queen takes queen, white will win because a queen is so much better than a rook. In fact, the only move for black to survive is to play queen to g6. It's the only queen move. Now, if you play rook check, my king can hide on h7. If you play queen check, I'll just happily trade queens, and you know, white might be a little bit better, but black is totally still in the game, and there's a lot of fight left here. So, a very important rule, but we can also use it in chess kid. If you touch the queen and then realize you don't know where you want to move her, put her right back, and the only difference is on chess kid, there's no touch move. You could move another piece, but the same rule applies. Put the piece right back on the starting square, think clearly again, and hopefully you'll find the best move the second time.